SADS enables non-monetary donations at your door-step

Story of SADS Social venture founded by Anushka Jain

Share At Door Step (SADS) is a For-Profit Social Venture that provides doorstep donation pickup for non-monetary donations and partners with brands for cause marketing initiatives. Anushka Jain, the founder of the venture, shares with Social Enablers her inspiration, journey and vision.

Rising up

Anushka was born into a middle-class Indian family in which her parents had humble aspirations of their daughter taking up a white collar job and ‘getting settled’ in life. She says, “My parents expected me to finish off my B.Tech, join a big MNC, get an MBA degree may be, get married and live happily ever after. A perfect middle-class story! However, I rose above the notions. I became an engineer by degree, a marketer by chance and an Entrepreneur by choice.”

Talking about her childhood, she continues “I love to tinker around with things and figure out new uses for them. Unlike other girls of my age who were keen on getting that Britney Spears dress, I was looking at how to make a business of selling those dresses. Some of the cookies from my idea factory were mitigating forest fires through efficient production of pine needles briquettes, moving customized theaters and party vans, mobile as UV protector using technology used in spaceships, etc.”

She grew up learning about the challenges in setting up business. “And I zeroed in on niche segment which was not being addressed by existing players in the market.” Share At Door Step, abbreviated as SADS was born.

How SADS social venture operates its services

SADS provides doorstep donation pickup for non-monetary donations and partners with brands for marketing initiatives. According to Anushka, “ the venture functions the same as Zomato works for food. Users can go to the site, put the location, and the NGO’s partnered were SADS list their requirements in the portal. If the user could find the requirement of donations he wants to donate in the list, he can schedule a pickup or else he can opt for “SADS fulfilled” option where we take care of delivering the donation items to the right non-profit.”

The prime changemakers or messengers of SADS also organize collection drives in societies, schools, and offices to fulfill the needs of the non-profits. Currently, SADS supports more than 100+ NGOs by fulfilling their non-monetary needs. Each NGO has a different requirement based on the cause it supports. For eg, an old fridge from a hostel is now used at Mobility India to store chemicals for walking aids for differently-abled people, a treadmill that was barely used by the donor is now used for therapy of kids, and the old storybooks are now been used in a library for special kids bringing smiles on so many faces daily, Anushka puts it.

Moreover, each time a donor donates something, he/she receives a gift from a socially inclined brand as a “gesture of thanks” for making a difference. This is to motivate the donor and create an emotional bond between the brand and the donor.

Right from the start, SADS focus to catch up with the rapid growth and keep demand and supply in balance. In the founder’s words, “We are automating a lot of processes and making it fully technology driven. We tried a similar model as surge pricing for the peak times(inspired by Uber), customized user experience (inspired by amazon) and have outsourced various non-core processes – logistics, NGO Auditing etc. What we now have is a mix of all the strategies that worked out for us pretty well. All this has helped us in scaling up quickly and efficiently.”

Futuristic aims

Our target is to expand in 4-6 cities in next one year. In terms of offering, we plan to start SADS fulfilled donation pickups and Express pickups in a couple of months. We are looking for strategic partners who can either help us scale to different geographical parts of the country or help us in doing this by bringing the required capital and experience.